atering place, I assure you,"
replied Crony; "being no other than the celebrated Peter Paragraph, the
London correspondent to the Morning Post, who involves, to use his
own phrase, the whole hemisphere of fashion in his mystifications and
reports: informs the readers of that paper how many rays of sunshine
have exhilarated the Brightonians during the week, furnishes a correct
journal of fogs, rains, storms, shipwrecks, and hazy mists; and, above
all, announces the arrivals and departures, mixing up royal and noble
fashionables and _kitchen stuff'_ in the same beautiful obscurity of
diction. Peter was formerly a _friseur_; but has long since quitted
the shaving and cutting profession for the more profitable calling
of collector of _on dits_ and _puffs extraordinaire_. The swaggering
broad-shouldered blade who follows near him, with a frontispiece like
the red lion, is the well-known radical, Jack S----h, now agent to the
French consul for this place, and the unsuccessful candidate for the
_independent_ borough of Shoreham." "A complete eccentric, by all my
hopes of pleasure! Crony, who are those two dashing divinities, who come
tripping along so lively yonder?" "Daughters of ~315~~pleasure," replied
the cynic; "a pair of justly celebrated paphians, west-end comets, who
have come here, no doubt, with the double view of profit and amusement.
The plump looking dame on the right, is Aug--ta C--ri, (otherwise lady
H----e); so called after the P--n--ss A----a, her godmamma. Her father,
old Ab--t, one of Q----n C----te's _original_ German pages, brought up
a large family in respectability, under the fostering protection of his
royal mistress. Aug----ta, at the early age of fifteen, eloped from St.
James's, on a matrimonial speculation with a young musician, Mr. An----y
C----, (himself a boy of 18)! From such a union what could be expected?
a mother at 16, and a neglected dishonoured wife, before she had counted
many years of womanhood. If she fell an unresisting victim to the
seduction which her youth, beauty, and musical talents attracted, '_her
stars were more to blame than she._' Let it be recorded, however,
that her conduct as wife and mother was free from reproach, until a
_depraved, unnatural_ man (who by the way has since fled the country)
set her the example of licentiousness.

"Amongst her earliest admirers, was the wealthy citizen, Mr. S----
M----, a bon vivant, a _five-bottle_ man (who has, not unaptly, been
since no